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Severe weather that struck the region east of Pueblo in late May and again this week pounded the 2014 crop with high winds, torrential rains and damaging hail.

The Rocky Ford Growers Association reported Friday that more than a quarter of the cantaloupe planted has been lost to the storms.

Matt Proctor, a third-generation farmer who manages 500 acres, lost his entire cantaloupe crop, pointing to a storm on May 23 that pummeled his melons with hail and brought 60 to 70 mph winds.

He also said that the worst of a storm from last week came to the Rocky Ford area an finished off Proctor’s 55 acres of cantaloupes.

Proctor’s losses represented more than half of the melons lost in the Rocky Ford area.

According to the RFGA, about 100 acres of the 360 acres of the super-sweet melons that were planted this season fell victim to the weather.

RFGA spokeswoman Diane Mulligan said growers affiliated with her organization lost about $500,000 in sales.

In 2013, Growers Association farmers harvested 280 acres and pulled in about $4.5 million from the famous cantaloupes, she said.

This most recent hit to the Rocky Ford melon industry comes just three years after a listeria scare all but eliminated sales for the growers from Otero and Crowley counties. During the catastrophic scare of 2011, the contamination was real, but was traced to melons two counties further east near the Colorado-Kansas border.

These legislators were recognized for their willingness to advocate on behalf of Colorado farmers and ranchers, their workability with Colorado Farm Bureau staff and leadership.

— Colorado Farm Bureau

2 ag-gag laws facing federal court challenges

The years-long fight between farm organizations and animal rights activists over laws prohibiting secretly filmed documentation of animal abuse is moving from state legislatures to federal courts as laws in Utah and Idaho face constitutional challenges.

Half of U.S. states have attempted to pass so-called ag-gag laws, but only seven have been successful. Among them are Idaho, where this year’s law says unauthorized recording is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine, and Utah, whose 2012 law makes it a crime to provide false information to gain access to a farm. Both states now face separate but similarly worded lawsuits that say the measures violate federal statutes offering whistleblower protections and free-speech guarantees.

Farm organizations and livestock producers say ag-gag laws are aimed at protecting their homes and businesses from intruders, and some plan to use social media to assure the public they have nothing to hide. But animal rights groups, free-speech activists and investigative journalists want to throw out the laws because they say the secrecy puts consumers at higher risk of food safety problems and animals at higher risk of abuse.

Numerous investigations have taken place on farms in the past decade, leading to “food safety recalls, citations for environmental and labor violations, evidence of health code violations, plant closures, criminal convictions, and civil litigation,” the Idaho lawsuit says.